Google DeepMind launches Gemini 4 Argon, gated to vetted cyber defenders via the Fairwind Program

Google's long-delayed flagship has arrived, but only for a limited group. Gemini 4 Argon targets long-horizon software engineering, legal and finance knowledge work, and cyber defense. It supports up to 1 million output tokens and is priced at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. It scored 77.9% on DeepSWE v1.1, ahead of DeepSeek V4.1-Flash at 74.2% and Grok 4.7 at 71.0%. Google says it is comparable to OpenAI's Astra and Anthropic's Opus on key coding and security benchmarks.

Access is staged. Argon goes first to vetted cybersecurity defenders through the Fairwind Program and to the US government's pre-release access program. AI Ultra subscribers and general API tiers come later. Google is also planning a guardrail-free variant for trusted defenders. The model's hardened sandboxes are designed to withstand prompt-injection attacks during automated red-teaming and code-remediation work.

The launch follows a difficult period. Google cancelled the planned Gemini 3.5 Pro, Reuters reports Demis Hassabis stepped aside in a DeepMind restructuring, and several Gemini leaders departed. A DeepMind engineer publicly disputed parts of Bloomberg's reporting.

Reactions are split. r/singularity users report Argon 'hardly hallucinates,' and r/artificial argued 'Google cooked OpenAI and Anthropic.' Hacker News, by contrast, showed little developer engagement, likely because few developers can access the model yet. The guardrail-free variant is drawing debate over who should hold offensive-capable models. Watch for when general API access arrives and for independent evaluations.